Retailers are not suffering from a lack of customer feedback. They lack business context. Walk into almost any retail organization today, and you will find no shortage of customer data: Net Promoter Scores, satisfaction surveys, reviews, social media, contact center transcripts, online comments, loyalty data, and behavioral signals.

Yet despite this abundance of insight, many executive teams still hesitate to make significant operational investments based solely on Voice of Customer (VoC) data. The question is not whether retailers are listening. It is whether they know which customers to listen to, which experiences actually change future behavior, and which problems are economically worth fixing.

The Problem Isn’t Customer Feedback

Retailers have spent years building sophisticated VoC programs. Unfortunately, many still stop at reporting. Monthly dashboards highlight declining satisfaction scores. Heat maps identify recurring pain points. Word clouds summarize customer comments. But executives are left asking a more consequential question:

“Which of these issues is actually costing us customers and revenue?”

Without that answer, customer feedback can be interesting without being actionable. Customer comments tell you what happened. Traditional metrics may tell you how customers feel. Neither, by itself, tells leadership what the problem costs or whether fixing it should take priority over competing investments.

Not Every Customer Problem Deserves Equal Attention—Focus on What Drives Behavior

Research by The Verde Group and the Baker Retailing Center at Wharton reinforces a critical point: you can’t evaluate customer experience simply by counting problems. Retailers need to understand which moments influence future purchasing behavior. The research examined friction, recovery, and engagement as distinct dimensions because each contributes differently to customer loyalty and market performance.

The distinction between frequency and damage is especially important. A separate Verde Group retail study of 2,535 U.S. consumers found that 66% of shoppers experienced at least one problem, with the study population averaging 7.7 problems. As friction accumulated, NPS fell sharply, from 57 among problem-free shoppers to 26 among shoppers experiencing six or more problems. The lesson is not simply that problems are bad. It is that the volume of friction can mask a more important question: which specific problems actually change customer behavior?

That is why prioritizing the most frequently reported issues can be misleading. In The Verde Group’s Most Damaging Problem methodology, we evaluate an issue by both how often it occurs and the damage it causes to future purchase intent. A relatively common problem may create irritation but little behavioral change, while a less frequent issue may materially increase the likelihood that a customer will not return.

A Retail Example: Translating Friction Into Revenue Exposure

The difference becomes much clearer when customer feedback is connected to economics. In a recent study for a large national retailer, Verde evaluated more than 70 potential problem experiences across the shopping journey and linked those experiences to repurchase or future consideration. The retailer’s highest-impact issues were not concentrated in a single channel.

The analysis quantified substantial annual revenue exposure behind these issues. At the priority-area level, returns and customer support each represented approximately $150 million to $200 million in annual revenue risk. Pricing and promotional value, as well as key elements of the store shopping experience, each represented roughly $100 million to $150 million. Order tracking and communication represented another $50 million to $100 million.

More importantly, the analysis gave leaders a way to act. The retailer aligned cross-functional teams around the problems with the greatest financial consequences. One year later, the number of Most Damaging Problems had declined and estimated annual revenue risk had fallen by approximately 60%. Fourteen previously damaging problems were eliminated across digital shopping, stores, and delivery. The case demonstrates what changes when VoC becomes a business decisioning system: leaders can prioritize a finite set of issues, assign ownership, measure improvement, and quantify the economic value of progress.

The Experiences Customers Remember Aren’t Always the Ones that Matter Most

Positive experiences require the same discipline. In a national study of more than 14,000 U.S. consumers conducted with the Baker Retailing Center at Wharton, shoppers evaluated 18 potential ‘WOW’ experiences. Advanced analysis then identified which experiences actually influenced repurchase behavior.

The result was a useful warning for retailers: not everything customers describe as a great experience drives loyalty. Depending on the retail category and experience, the most influential positive moments increased purchase intent by 12% to 58%. Hassle-free customer support was the one universal driver across the retail categories studied, while other high-impact experiences varied by retail model.

✓ Mass merchants benefited most from well-stocked inventory, strong digital shopping experiences, and fast and free shipping.

✓Specialty retailers benefited from easy, enjoyable, and frictionless shopping, along with attention to product packaging.

✓Department stores saw the strongest impact from an easy shopping experience with no problems from start to finish.

✓Category-focused retailers benefited most from clean, organized, and welcoming store environments.

Loyalty Programs Can Protect the Relationship – Or Magnify the Disappointment

This tension was highlighted in the Harvard Business Review article “Why Customer Loyalty Programs Can Backfire”, which featured research conducted by professors at the Wharton School alongside The Verde Group. The research found that loyalty-program members can react more negatively than non-members when they encounter service failures—such as shipping issues, returns problems, or stockouts—because membership raises expectations for the relationship. In Verde’s loyalty research, members also reported more friction than non-members across several journey stages. For example, 74% of loyalty members reported a problem during returns, while one of the lower-friction points measured was payment among non-members at 31%.

The research also found that loyalty benefits vary substantially in their ability to create authentic loyalty. Free shipping and free returns produced the largest measured loyalty lift among the benefits tested (27%), followed by sale alerts and access to personal shopping history (23% each), and points-based rewards (21%). Other familiar benefits produced much smaller lifts.

Most importantly, the HBR-featured research showed that loyalty benefits did not universally ‘inoculate’ a retailer against a damaging experience. Depending on the problem and benefit, membership could soften the impact of friction or create what the researchers described as a boomerang effect, where a service failure produces a stronger negative response among loyalty members. The takeaway for retailers is that loyalty strategy cannot sit apart from operations. Benefits, policies, and service recovery need to work together, especially at the moments most likely to damage future value.

Why Many Retailers Don’t Fully Trust Their Voice of Customer Data

When VoC programs cannot answer questions such as which friction points cost repeat purchases, which positive experiences create measurable lift, which operational failures create the greatest financial risk, or what the return is on fixing one issue before another, the data becomes hard to prioritize.

Leaders don’t lack trust in their customers. They need customer insight translated into business outcomes.

The Missing Link Is Operational and Financial Data

Customer experience does not happen in isolation. Inventory systems, fulfillment, returns, pricing, digital platforms, associate performance, and contact center operations all shape what customers ultimately experience. That is why the most valuable customer insight does not come from surveys alone.

Turning Customer Feedback into Business Strategy

Retailers do not need more customer feedback. They need more confidence to act on the feedback they already have. The next evolution of VoC is therefore not another dashboard or another listening channel. It is business decisioning: identifying the experiences that influence customer behavior, quantifying the financial impact of friction and positive experiences, connecting those findings to operational causes, and prioritizing investment based on measurable business outcomes.

References

Verde Group retail client Revenue@Risk research, 2025. Client and brand identifiers have been anonymized.

The Verde Group / Baker Retailing Center at Wharton consumer retail research, 2020, national sample of 14,016 U.S. consumers.

Harvard Business Review, “Why Customer Loyalty Programs Can Backfire,” May–June 2021. Research conducted by professors at the Wharton School with The Verde Group.

The Verde Group loyalty and CX friction research, national sample of 2,535 U.S. consumers. Brand identifiers have been anonymized.